


Border Crossings

by Argyle



Category: Historical RPF
Genre: Drug Use, Historical Inaccuracy, M/M, Romantic Poets - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-08-07
Updated: 2007-08-07
Packaged: 2018-01-20 23:00:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1528910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Argyle/pseuds/Argyle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Four times Samuel didn't come home, and one time he did.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Border Crossings

I.  
“Such an hour to go rambling,” William mutters, tugging the collar of his greatcoat tighter round his throat. The night is cold; he forces his hands still. “And knowing I must follow. The man is a lunatic.”  
  
As soon as the words have left his mouth, he regrets them. But then again, there is no one to bear witness. And then again, he supposes he could do better, for even Samuel, red-eyed and weary, would have chosen a word more befitted for balladry.  
  
This is the scene which then rises up before him: Samuel, pallid and sallow-cheeked, hunched down in a bed of reeds. There are roses in his eyes, lilies on his brow; there are nettles tangled in his hair. He is wild, dizzy from country air and waxing moon. His lips are bitter with brine. There is laudanum on his tongue.  
  
William would be no kinder in eulogy.  
  
As it is, he lifts Samuel by the forearms with a fierceness he does not feel. Rather, there is only the dull ache of what might have been. His friend sags in his damp clothes.  
  
When William half-carries him back into town, he says only this: “Why choose this fate?”  
  
  
II.  
Would it be a hard thing, a challenge, for Samuel to comprehend what he does to William? Long nights and longer mornings spent at Samuel’s bedside have deepened the circles beneath William’s eyes with the fecundity of tidal pools. Still, he cannot leave.  
  
He cannot turn away, even in this alley, where offal clings to every stony surface.  
  
But Samuel is made of glass. In the darkness, he stands like some craftsman’s doll: gentle curve leads to gentle curve, gleam to glare, commanded by breath. His hands are cold against William’s chest. William gasps as they tug apart his shirt, down and down upon his skin until long, ink-stained fingertips work to unbutton his trousers.  
  
William grinds his mouth against Samuel’s, tasting earth.  
  
Slowly, Samuel frees William’s cock; slowly, his fingers shift.  
  
The alley wall rough against his back, William wraps his arms round his friend’s thin waist, and soon he is reeling, taut with hunger, saturated with brine. He arches his hips into the pressure.  
  
With iambic regularity, William comes in Samuel’s palm, falls to his knees, takes Samuel in his mouth. Afterwards, there is silence. Then Samuel laughs. He stares about, seeing life where William sees only gloom.  
  
  
III.  
And William supposes he deserves nothing else. Occasionally, he glimpses himself in shop windows, sees his dark, cropped hair here and there poking free from his hat, sees his stubbled chin and sweat-stained cravat. He waits for Samuel to come forth from his favorite haunt like some spectre of old, and William, chin held high, will again take him home.  
  
“Sara worries after you,” he plans to tell Samuel. “She is sleepless, and it is your fault.”  
  
The lie would taste no sweeter in the telling.  
  
So perhaps he will instead leave it as this: “Why not return to London? You were happy there, once.”  
  
To which Samuel would of course reply, “I cannot,” and it would be true.  
  
Like Prometheus, William understands that he is bound to pay his due, and thus bound, he waits. It is the same as anything else. In the fickle light of a tavern, he pens verse into a diary: roses and lilies and nettle bloom up in black ink. He imagines a churchyard. He imagines a bed of reeds. A phial of laudanum, plucked from Samuel’s bedside and kept for good measure, rests in his pocket like a stone.  
  
William waits until daybreak.  
  
  
IV.  
“Aye, forty days I rambled. For a time, I reckoned there would be no end to the desert.” With that, the old man pauses to drink deeply from his tankard. The crowd about him shifts and murmurs; Samuel, seated at William’s side, clenches his fists until his knuckles grow white. His eyes are hungry and clear.  
  
There is ale in the man’s beard: beads of moisture cling to pale hairs like sea foam.  
  
William has heard the tale before, observing all the while how it changes each time, by whim or hour or temperament. He knew Samuel would appreciate the mariner’s restlessness.  
  
“Can you imagine, Will,” Samuel begins, and touches William’s knee. “To have seen such things. To have felt ill winds upon one’s brow, and tasted bitter brine.”  
  
William smiles. “I fear I have not had enough drink to believe in ghost stories.”  
  
“It takes but one visit to the shoals to understand the water.”  
  
“The muck, you mean.”  
  
“Look deeper, Will. These are the stories we shall tell.”  
  
“It’s growing late.”  
  
“But how does it end?”  
  
“As all things do.”  
  
Samuel turns away.  
  
“Forty days I rambled. Forty days, and not a breeze, nor a drop of rain...”  
  
  
V.  
Dawn that day is a long time coming. When William returns from town, the cottage is lined here with violet shadows, there with blue ones. To his tired eyes, they look like cobwebs, or the goblin scrawl which marks Samuel’s parchment: he had completed seven stanzas or more before the candle guttered and was spent. The ink is still wet.  
  
A wineglass rests on the table, half-empty. William does not need to taste it to know it is laced with laudanum; for so long its scent has been on Samuel’s breath.  
  
And Samuel himself slumbers on the settee, one leg dangling over the side and the other planted firmly on the floor, a coverlet pulled to his chin. William watches him for a moment, and then reaches forward to brush the hair from his brow.  
  
Samuel stirs. “What kept you?”  
  
“The fog. Does Sara know you’re here?”  
  
“She only knows I’m not _there_.”  
  
“Technicalities,” says William.  
  
“No,” Samuel replies, and cracks open an eye. “Nothing so crude.”  
  
“I suppose I could do better.”  
  
“Get some rest. I thought we might go to the lake today.”  
  
“And what of the manuscript?”  
  
Samuel shrugs languidly. “It will be there when we return.”


End file.
